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Aramex’s suite of e-commerce solutions can enable any company to begin selling their products online.

E-commerce is perhaps the one essential component of 21st century retail. Extending the reach of products, opening new markets, amplifying marketing efforts and helping to reduce logistics, inventory and shelf-life costs, it is an opportunity that merchants can ill-afford to spurn – especially as it’s a fair assumption that their principal competitors haven’t.

E-commerce is also an ideal means for start-ups to create a retail model without the requirements of physical space, sufficient stock or in-store employees. In emerging markets, moreover, it can offer a whole new range of products to a newly aspirational consumer. As evidenced by the recent successes of MarkaVIP and Cobone, these are opportunities the MENA region is finally learning to exploit.

Making the first move

Getting started, though, is hardly as straightforward as making the decision to – especially for traditional, bricks-and-mortar retailers who know the majority of their customers by name. How does the family store, trading in high-quality chocolates, make the move to an e-commerce model scale? How can a small staff with limited technological knowledge deliver their trusted personal service online without investing in a fully-outsourced solution? How can they manage the fulfillment of varying orders in a perishable product?

Aramex has a new product that can help. Aramex has always been a champion of e-commerce, whether through the company’s own Shop’n’Ship product, which opened up online stores in the US and the UK to consumers across the Middle East, or through the provision of fulfillment solutions for the likes of Sukar and Souq.com. Now, Aramex has launched REDe to help a whole new generation of small-to-medium-sized businesses sell their products online.

Your site, our know-how

Aramex REDe enables any company of any size to start selling online. Our chocolatier can set up their storefront, create and update their inventories, process orders and receive payments through one straightforward solution. “We have structured our operations on the ground and customer tools to enable e-commerce”, commented Faris Fallouh, General Manager – Express and Ground Services. “Its about empowering entrepreneurs and small businesses to start selling online in as little time and effort as possible.”

By using the flexible Martjack platform, online stores are simple to create and boast a number of features to promote items and offer discounts, while Aramex Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can integrate your store with our delivery and tracking services. REDe’s inbuilt Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is then able to reconcile all orders and notifications. The chocolatier can continue to deliver its products to its local customers, but now seamlessly and efficiently offer the same quality to purchasers wherever they’re located – boosting profits, expanding possibilities.

“We have always believed strongly in the power of e-commerce to expand the horizons of companies in emerging markets, “says Hassan Mikail, Regional Manager, E-Commerce Services. “REDe has been developed to enable anyone to create an online presence and start selling their products to as wide as possible a customer base – all supported by Aramex’s existing delivery and tracking services.”

Total e-commerce support

For companies that already have online presence, Aramex can integrate existing systems with fulfillment services, supply-chain solutions and round-the-clock technical support. Aramex’s Developers Solutions Center provides any in-house development team the APIs and e-tools in a variety of programming languages to enable companies to calculate rates for different Aramex services, request pick-ups and prepare and track shipments – all designed to help reduce costs and automate operations.